


The Two Ravens

by aderyn



Series: The Bird Diviner [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fractured Fairy Tale, and other kinds, and wings, brotherly and sisterly love, mad alchemy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-15 00:11:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Mycroft Holmes was twelve and Sherlock was five, their grey-eyed mother was re-married, to a mad alchemist named only M.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Two Ravens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> A very happy birthday and a bouquet of starwort to [wiggleofjudas](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wiggleofjudas/pseuds/wiggleofjudas), empress of fairytales.
> 
> Based on the the Grimms' The Seven Ravens and [variants.](http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0451.html)
> 
>  
> 
> [Beautiful art by jillandsarah!](http://jillandsarah.tumblr.com/post/53217373812/a-couple-of-scenes-from-the-two-ravens-by-aderyn)

_"I wish that those boys would all turn into ravens."—J. & W. Grimm_

 

When Mycroft Holmes was twelve and Sherlock was five, their grey-eyed mother was re-married, to a mad alchemist named M., and became pregnant with a daughter. Like Sherlock she was even in the womb sharp as a blade, like Mycroft soft as the moor-rose with its hidden thorn.

When the girl, Molly, was born, M. took to his daughter and wanted to keep her alone, and stifling his wife’s protests synthesized an elixir that turned her sons into ravens. He banished them to the heights to cry in the wind. Sherlock called out the flight patterns of the other ravens before they made them, and Mycroft perched in a pine and plotted sieges on the tower where their sister and mother lived under the mercurial eye of their stepfather.

Molly grew up clever and sorrowful and quick with her hands. M. doted on her, but her mother wept and wove her garlands of starwort and told her stories of her bird-brothers crying alone on the heights. By the time she was of age she had come to hate her father, and her black hair blew behind her as she crept from the tower and ran to the faerie stones with her skirts in her fists and a circlet of thorn in her pocket.

“I’ve brought the thorn,” she called to the Faerie King, “how do I rescue my raven-brothers from the heights?”

“Molly, star-hair, sharp as a blade,” said the Faerie King (whose secret name he would not say), “I weep to tell you so, but the only way is to weave yourself out of this world. You must never have been.”

“I’ll do it,” Molly said.

“I’ll find you again,” said the Faerie King. And he set the circlet of thorn over his heart.

Molly ran to the heights and tempted her brothers out of the pine with a silver thread of her own weaving. She bound them and tugged them close and slipped from the world into Sherlock’s skin. And in the place she couldn’t quite fill, under the skin of his left arm, the raven flights remained.

The Holmes brothers, in their human skin strong with the bird-magic of the heights, rescued their mother from M. and cast him from the tower. He vanished into the night vowing revenge in a voice made of fire.

Sherlock stole from him a bead of mercury. Mycroft stole from him a nugget of gold.

They broke the silver thread their sister had bound them with and set off on different paths.

Mycroft grew up and married Power with a band hammered from the gold.

Sherlock grew up and turned the mercury in his palm and dreamed of his mad stepfather while he chased grave-robbers and trespassers and stone-defilers for the Faerie King. He thought he’d married his Work until he met a grey-eyed warrior named John, who brought with him an alder staff wrapped in nettles and a sword that turned to flowering balm in the cupboard.  He stole Sherlock back from Death and chased trespassers with him and Sherlock was alive in the blood as he’d never been until one day a raven came out of the heights with news of M., who had learned of his whereabouts and threatened to burn everything he cared for to the ground.

“I don’t have a heart,” Sherlock whispered to himself.

The feathers under Sherlock’s skin stirred and he remembered the flight patterns of the ravens.

Mycroft gave Sherlock his band of gold. The Faerie King gave him his circlet of thorn. Sherlock pretended to give himself to Death and went away to find his mad stepfather. John put his sword in the cupboard and wept.

Many years later, when Sherlock came home from his terrible journey and M. was finally gone from the world, the Faerie King took back the thorns and planted them in his starlit stones and Molly sprang from them sharp as a blade and soft as the moor-rose.

Mycroft took back the band of gold. He took his sister’s hand and she wove for him a silver thread to keep their brother close.

John took the flowering balm from the cupboard and put it on the table and stroked through the skin of Sherlock’s ruined arm one hidden black wing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Aarne-Thompson-Uther Type 451](http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0451.html)   
> [The Seven Ravens](http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm025.html)   
>    
> [The Six Swans](http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm049.html)   
> [The Six Swans illustration](http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/ford/7.html)   
> [wild aster,or starwort](http://chalksteppe.org/en/flora-and-fauna/species/aster-amellus.html)   
> [ flowering bee balm](http://www.hgtvgardens.com/perennials/flower-of-the-day-bee-balm)


End file.
